Asiatic Mode of Production

[Hermes]

This is going to be a really idiotic post, because I don't really understand the theory all that well, but it seemed like an alright time to post it along with the primitive communism and shift to feudalism threads.

Could anyone explain what differentiates the Asiatic mode of production from feudalism, in particular? I've read the wikipedia page on it, but the only real difference I can see is the centralization of power in the hands of the ruler. Again, though, having a very elementary understanding of feudalism (and, I guess, history-as-mode of production in general) I'm almost certainly missing quite a lot.

This term seems to be used far less than others; has it been disproved?

Can anyone recommend any texts dealing specifically with this theory in relation to modern, or recent, research into non-western modes of production?

This last question is entirely tangential, and you can probably tell exactly why I'm asking this simply by the question itself: what best describes the mode of production in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (welcome to Western Humanities, etc).

Sorry again for the ignorant question, I still have a difficult time wrapping my head around modes of production.

[synthesis]

I could be wrong, but I think a big part of the Asiatic mode is that it called for the "working" communities, tribes, what have you, to come to the population centers to do the work for the ruling class some months out of the year and then return home and possibly pay taxes or tribute for the rest of the year. Again, I'm not sure about this, but it would differ from feudalism in that there is a highly migratory element, possibly to compensate for nomadic cultures.

edit: Marxists.org says that they dropped the concept around the time of the Grundisse, and replaced it with their four-fold system of modes of production, which were tribal, ancient, feudal and capitalist. I believe - not just because of the nomenclature - that ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia would be part of the ancient mode. From what I can recall, the above part (about constantly migratory labor) was still true for those societies, but again, I could be wrong.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think it has to do with the level of centralization. In a feudal society, local soldier-landlords dominate the economy, and in the so-called "asiatic" mode of production, a king and his ministers dominate the economy as a ruling clique.

The whole idea of it being particularly "Asiatic" is kind of a racist Hegelian anachronism however. Many Asian societies, like Japan and early China, were feudal. Greek city-state tyrannies were in some sense "despotic". So it seems more appropriate to refer to it as "despotism" than "asiatic".

The Pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings as far as I know were "asiatic" (admitting the aforementioned problem with that title).

I think we should also abandon the linear, positivistic notion of development. Why would feudalism necessarily follow from despotism? The despotic Chinese Qing dynasty collapsed and a bourgeois capitalist economy emerged, not a feudal one. An old despotic Japanese order in the emperor brought about the destruction of feudalism, and then pushed for modern capitalism.

[synthesis]

I really get the impression that when they were formulating their system of modes of production, they just kind of lumped everything between the tribal and feudal modes into this one big amorphous group called "Asiatic" or "ancient," since only the tribal, feudal and capitalist modes were really relevant to their theory/analysis, but they still needed something to describe everything else.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I really get the impression that when they were formulating their system of modes of production, they just kind of lumped everything between the tribal and feudal modes into this one big amorphous group called "Asiatic" or "ancient," since only the tribal, feudal and capitalist modes were really relevant to their theory/analysis, but they still needed something to describe everything else.

Yeah I think that they didn't have a lot of information and had to formulate things mostly through accounts either by upper classes in the past (or other regions) or accounts by European colonists.

I don't know a whole lot about this particular subject but I think the concept of "asiatic" production is either highly contested or rejected by a lot of revolutionaries and marxist academics today. I started reading an academic book about this very subject, but frankly it was more aimed at people with academic history backgrounds and it was a bit over my head because it was using unexplained references to cultures and dynasties as if the connotation was apparent -- and for me it wasn't even though I'd guess that I have a decent knowldge of general history for a lay-person.

[TiberiusGracchus]

Could anyone explain what differentiates the Asiatic mode of production from feudalism, in particular?

It's "state feudalism".

The feudal mode of production is basicly about primary producers (in practice farmers, individually or in groups) managing their own production and thus providing for themselves. But through "other than economic pressure" the farmers are made to give up a surplus in some form or another. The form depends on how developed the economy is; day work, payment in kind and lastly payment in money.

Western Europe followed this course: the proximity of merchant cities and more and more active markets meant that the peasants themselves could market their goods and get a monetary income, and also that the feudal lords got temped by the markets and more in need of money.

East of Elbe the development went in the opposite direction. It was far to the markets in the west. Only the most wealthy could organize export of agricultural products. Therefor they wanted products, not coin. And with the modern times begun a development towards un-freedom that culminated with the imposing of serfdom in Russia during the 18th century. Serfdom is not a necessary component in economic feudalism: it becomes necessary when, as in Russia, the peasants can withdraw from oppression by moving away, in this case to Siberia or the Cossack republics of Ukraine.

In Japan a feudalism arose that was almost identical to the western european variant. But in China an in large parts of India the states could prevent that their servants transformed the land they were payed with into alodial, hereditary property and themselves into an hereditary landed nobility. The ruling class was therefor refered to ruling in and through the state. But for the chinese peasants it didn't matter wether the land they farmed juridically belonged to the state or to a nobleman: the same surplus was extracted from them in the same forceful way.

Every mode of production founded on class division and exploitation (which is the same thing) is characterised, and seperated, by the way that the social surplus is transfered from the producers to the ruling class. In China feudalism reigned, but not private feudalism as in Europe and Japan, but state feudalism. And it was this variant of feudalism that Marx, in lack of data, called "the asiatic mode of production". Russian farmers during Stalin also lived in a state feudal system: they managed their own production on kolkhozes and sovkhozes, and the exploitation had the form of state decided and forced deliveries - however this was not the dominating mode of production in Soviet Society.

[Dave B]

I think when it comes to the Asiatic mode of production; which wasn’t Asiatic per se, it was just that in Karl’s time it was supposed to be the only geographical region it was still ‘practiced’; as the rest of the ‘European’ world had supposedly moved on.

In fact you could argue I think that it was still sort of going on in principal in the Scottish highlands and Clan system into the modern era and just North at the time of industrial Glasgow and a global centre of the European enlightenment movement.

It is still a fuzzy and imprecise subject and requires an effort to grapple with, and on the face of it for me anyway, a bit of an objectionable idea.

Karl in fact laid out the idea in the opening chapter of volume one.

The “idea” was that in primitive societies, or perhaps more accurately in primitive communities, you still had division of labour.

And suspending egalitarian prejudice for the moment.

The distribution of the products in it were arranged by some kind consensus, but not necessarily equally, but more on a basis of or according to what was regarded as culturally and socially necessary for all the various and different members of the community to receive and consume etc.

Thus the chiefs, priests and witchdoctors etc as the personification of the intellectual development and repositories culture of the community wouldn’t do any ‘productive’ work and would be maintained in a relatively luxurious position concomitant to their ‘agreed’ and important role in the community ( ‘consciously’ understood by all the members of the community).

Returning to practical and observable reality.

There are examples still in existence eg the Polynesian Anutan communist that are a really great and interesting bunch of people.

Thus;



[Concern for others is the backbone of Anutan philosophy. 'Aropa' is a concept for giving and sharing, roughly translated as compassion, love and affection. Aropa informs the way Anutans treat one another and it is demonstrated through the giving and sharing of material goods such as food. For example, the land on Anuta is shared among the family units so that each family can cultivate enough food to feed themselves and those around them.]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/anuta/index.shtml

However there appears to some of us anti Bolsheviks; a fly in the ointment in this community, and a contradiction, as they have a well looked after ‘chief’ and ‘big brother’.

Which for them appears to be more a matter of ‘civic pride’, who acts as a kind of disinterested, community conscious wise judge, intellectual, chairman and final decider when it comes to the community decision making process etc.

But who are we as Johnny come lately infantile communists to pass judgement, as some kind of ‘cultural imperialist’, on what is essentially a well functioning ‘idyllic’ communist society?

I am sure Bolsheviks salivate at this kind; thing whereas people like myself groan.

But using hyperbole, as regards keeping the Anutan chief in Clover or bedecked in sharks teeth jewellery to show off to visitors, or whatever, as Karl said these are; “their own mutual personal relations”.

Thus;


Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind.

Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

So you also had it demonstrated in a slightly different form in the 18th and 19th century clan system.

They, in the age of the enlightenment, didn’t want to be racially stereotyped as congenital ignorant hillbillies; so they would send their Clan chief off for a proper education to learn Latin, Greek and a discerning palate for a good French wine just to prove it.

So was the Clan Chief in the ‘old system’ creaming off surplus labour and living it up without the consensus or mutual agreement of his community?

But there are no prizes for guessing where this can lead to when it finds itself on the fringes of the ‘whirlpool’ of capitalism and bourgeois culture.

The clan chiefs are educated in more ways than one, forget their roots and personal dependences for the economic and profitable advantages of land clearances and sheepwalks etc.

But you don’t need capitalism to ‘pervert’ this otherwise ‘admirable’ system’.

Part of the division of labour in a community may involve having a group of tooled up and trained bruisers, kept in good condition, to deal with raiding opportunist bandits, ‘Vikings’ and Ghengis Khan type characters.

So you also have a military ‘caste’ (or military industrial complex?) as well as a religious, intellectual and judicial/civic one.

All these pampered ‘castes’, which ‘originally’ just reflected a mutually agreed state of ‘mutual personal and community dependence’ can start to think, quite materially and mutually amongst themselves , and more about the ‘pamper’ than their own essential part in the community syndicate.

The military caste, as in feudal Europe, and the 20th century New York Mafia ie the Godfather films, can turn their attentions more directly to oppressing and extortion of the community of those they were supposed, or were believed, to originally protect.

The intellectual priest castes etc require a more sophisticated approach but often the military and intellectual castes form a symbiotic alliance of convenience.

The balance or overall picture varying according to local material and geographical conditions.

Returning back to the general idea however of acceptable social and cultural divisions in society being necessary of itself in the more modern expressions of it

And as it found itself with regards some in the 19th century, like Dickens who opposed trade unions for instance.

The self evident ‘truistic’ argument ‘went’ that society didn’t have at that point in time the resources or capacity etc to enable everyone to be enlightened as to the finer and culturally elevated levels that were available to humanity, and its vanguard intelligentsia.

[and in fact Lenin’s argument re the corrupted and degraded working class with its vices- all the content of the ‘best’ ideas never go away it is just the form that they take that changes.]

But that didn’t mean, for the likes of Dickens, that we should look down on the Arcadian barefoot sheppardess’s, picturesque rural peasants or productive workers ; in fact if anything we should look at them with dreamy eyed envy for their natural Rousseaunistmode of life.

.

I don’t know how it can be said that Karl abandoned the notion of Asiatic mode of production when he slotted it in the opening chapter.



In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the conversion of men into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection.

They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and between man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

I am just explaining this as I understand it which for me as a pure scientist is social science, sociology and anthropology ‘shit’.

But I do appreciate how Karl and Fred attempted to put this kind of thing on a more methodical and rational footing without being feeling forced to go along with it all.